Children from birth through age 5 are developing rapidly, and timely access to high-quality services can have major impacts on their school readiness, development, and family well-being. To increase families’ awareness and trust and reduce barriers to accessing early childhood services, we recommend the following strategies.1
Working Within Your Organization
- Learn about the early childhood programs in your community, including Head Start and Early Head Start, child care and early education programs that accept state-subsidized financial assistance, state-supported preschool programs, maternal, infant, and early childhood home-visiting programs, and your state’s early intervention agency. To build community connections and deepen your understanding of available services, invite the early childhood programs to present to your organization on their services, goals, eligibility criteria, and support for culturally and linguistically diverse families. Similarly, offer to conduct presentations for these programs, highlighting your organization’s work and the cultural contexts and needs of the communities you serve.
The Office of Refugee Resettlement provides grant funding opportunities to support access to early childhood services, including Early Refugee School Impact (RSI) programs for children from birth to age 5 and the Refugee Family Child Care Microenterprise Development (RFCCMED) program to develop the workforce pipeline. You can find out if these programs are operating in your community and, if not, ask your state refugee coordinator for information about future funding opportunities related to the Early RSI and RFCCMED.
- Explore ways to best support families’ access to early childhood programs. Some resettlement agencies have the capacity to develop and manage early childhood services on-site. Some will find it easier to include consideration for early childhood programs in their case management practices. For example, you can refer families to early childhood programs that screen children for developmental delays. When developmental screeners identify potential concerns and the parents/guardians agree, you can refer families to their state’s early intervention program. You may also connect families with other immigrant and refugee-serving community-based organizations (CBOs) or Early RSI programs, if they are operating in your community, that help families navigate a wide range of resources, including early childhood services. Read more about helping families access early childhood services here.
Engaging with Families
- Tailor referrals and connections to respond to families’ preferences and needs. While many early childhood services are tailored to meet individual families’ unique needs and goals, some services and programs may vary based on specific contexts. For example, families who have a caregiver staying at home full time with children may not be interested in full-time child care. On the other hand, they may be interested in home-visiting services, which provide parenting support and can connect them to other services. Alternately, they may be interested in part-time or transitional preschool programs for school readiness. Other families may need support finding child care options during nonstandard business hours. You can make referrals for families based on their needs and goals for their children. Learn more about finding child care options here.
- Share information with families in a variety of formats. Consider sharing information on programs both orally and in writing, as well as doing outreach to trusted leaders in refugee communities. Some caregivers may be more receptive to information they receive through their trusted relationship with you or their friends or community members.
- Translate materials into families’ preferred languages. Families may need materials in languages other than English or in simplified and plain English. Read more on the use of translation apps here and find a toolkit to help navigate the processes of both cultural validation and translation review here. Toolkits to address language barriers with older children may also be helpful for families with young children.
- Assist families with applying for early childhood services and accompany them to visit programs. You can build families’ comfort with available early childhood services by personally introducing them to a program’s parent-facing staff member. You can also accompany families to visit early childhood programs that have center- or clinic-based services to build familiarity with the facility and program. You can help families navigate online enrollment processes that may be difficult for those with limited digital literacy and English ability.
- Empower caregivers to advocate for their child’s needs. Many newcomer families come from countries with limited early childhood programming. Caregivers may not understand the benefits or importance of these programs immediately. By fostering their understanding and awareness, you can empower caregivers to proactively identify needs and concerns for their children and ask about available resources.
Partnering with Other Organizations in Your Community
Your organization can partner with early childhood programs and service systems in various ways to increase family access:
- Support culturally and linguistically responsive programming. Families may be more open to early childhood programs that understand and support their cultural backgrounds. Possible ways to support early childhood programs in that capacity could include the following:
- Provide training and consultation to early childhood program staff on refugee communities’ needs.
- Encourage early childhood programs to provide culturally relevant opportunities for caregivers, such as caregiver education and early literacy-focused workshops, developmental screening events, and playgroups for children.
Pair qualified interpreters with early childhood service providers, either during an introductory period while familiarizing caregivers with a specific opportunity (e.g., touring a preschool) or across the program experience (e.g., over the course of early intervention services).
- Encourage early childhood programs to provide culturally relevant opportunities for caregivers, such as caregiver education and early literacy-focused workshops, developmental screening events, and playgroups for children.
- Develop a workforce training pipeline. You can work to match newly resettled refugee caregivers interested in early childhood careers with appropriate credentialing, certificate, or training programs, as needed, to prepare them to be hired for provider positions. You may be able to tap into Refugee Career Pathways or RFCCMED (Refugee Family Child Care Microenterprise Development) programs operating in your community.
- Include a focus on the needs of families with children from birth to age 5 when facilitating or participating in community-wide meetings to coordinate and prepare for arriving refugees.
- Raise awareness about the needs of families with young children in existing refugee and immigrant coordination-focused meetings, such as Quarterly Consultations. Invite mainstream early childhood programs to these conversations to foster greater awareness in the early childhood community. These meetings could also provide a springboard to develop working groups that focus on young children’s needs in newcomer families. Learn more about how to use quarterly consultations to build meaningful coordination here.
- Seek out and participate in mainstream community-level collaboratives that focus on children, young people, and families. These collaboratives can give your organization a platform to raise awareness of refugee families in your community and foster partnership opportunities with early childhood providers. Collaboratives have various names and can be locally organized or state-facilitated. For example, federally funded Early Childhood Comprehensive Systems grants are currently in 20 states and include cross-sector collaboration and partnership as key goals.
- Raise awareness about the needs of families with young children in existing refugee and immigrant coordination-focused meetings, such as Quarterly Consultations. Invite mainstream early childhood programs to these conversations to foster greater awareness in the early childhood community. These meetings could also provide a springboard to develop working groups that focus on young children’s needs in newcomer families. Learn more about how to use quarterly consultations to build meaningful coordination here.
- Address barriers related to transportation. You can colocate programs in accessible locations or encourage outreach in places where refugee families are served.
- Partner with early childhood–focused organizations to operate their programs on-site or adjacent to resettlement agencies and refugee-serving CBOs to promote easy access to programming. This can be especially effective when child-focused services are paired with caregiver-focused activities at the same location. For example, a child could access a preschool program while the child’s caregivers meet with their case managers or attend employment- or language-focused training.
Partner with early childhood program personnel to regularly attend or station themselves in locations where newcomer families are participating in refugee-serving programs or social events. Spotlight staff with shared cultural and language backgrounds when possible, will maximize impact.
